There are over 45,000 flights per day just in the United States alone, which means about 3 million passengers traveling each day, according to statistics from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). That means that with so many individuals traveling, flight attendants will have pretty much seen it all. So when a Twitter account called Two Guys on a Plane asked: “Flight attendants, what’s your biggest pet peeve on the airplane?” plenty of flight attendants were ready to go with responses.
The account is run by two flight attendants that are married and who met, of course, on an airplane. Their account keeps track of plenty of obnoxious passenger behavior, but this time they decided to see what others have experienced as well. The results did not disappoint.
One of the first responses to come up was: “We’ll start: passengers wearing noise-canceling headphones and yelling ‘what’ when you try to speak to them.” In a related issues, another user tweeted out in response: “How about people who just don’t even wear headphones and play their videos, music, video games, kids movies for all of us to hear?”
Another response was: “Putting backpacks in overhead bins when we specifically tell people it’s a shared space and intended for the big suitcases and to put them under the seat in front of them,” which we can imagine just causes unnecessary logistical issues and shuffling around of bags at the most stressful time of the flight: boarding.
Another flight attendant tweeted: “Switching seats without asking (when it’s assigned seating).” This can cause a lot of confusion and anger between passengers, which of course the flight attendants have to mitigate.
One flight attendant shared this crazy tweet that described what passengers throw into toilets, which includes: “diapers, liquid soap bottles, wedding rings, and cell phones in the toilet. I’ve had to pull all kinds of stuff out of there.”
While stretching is generally advised during long flights, one flight attendant pointed out an annoying thing that a lot of passengers do: “Galley Yoga. I absolutely hate it when people mistake our kitchen for a Yoga Studio,” another added “I once came back to the galley mid-service to find a woman doing a headstand. Uh, no…we work in here, thank you.”
If you are traveling by plane often, try to keep these things in mind. Happy flight attendants are much preferred, and when they aren’t annoyed, there’s a much higher chance that you’ll get helped quickly, plus being considerate is just the right thing to do.